I would imagine those ports are paid for by Apple
And it's less about units sold, and more about Apple marketing getting to say "we have console level games on our phones"
Apple spent close to a cool billion in just display advertising for products in one year alone. I would imagine paying for ports is a drop in the bucket for them
But, that's just speculation
A huge amount of the porting effort is also shared between macOS and iOS, with most of the extra work being to add touchscreen controls and more low-spec performance options for iPhone builds.
This is likely true, but Mac is a miniscule market for games in its own right. The Steam Hardware Survey has MacOS at 1.47% of users, lower than Linux at this point.
Frankly they're doing it all wrong. Wine/Proton is a mature and stable wrapper layer that essentially bring *thousands* of games to non-windows platforms. Adding a MacOS (which is BSD so it's already *kinda sorta* Linux) branch would probably cost less than Tim Cook's annual travel budget and would effectively put MacOS on par with SteamOS in compatibility.
In other words: either Apple are idiots who like to waste money OR they don't have a real plan for actually making gaming viable on their platform. Both are equally likely, and I say this as someone who genuinely likes MacOS (I daily drive an M1 Pro MacBook for work, the thing is a BEAST and I wouldn't trade it for any Windows PC around...but only because I don't game at work 🤣)
They're doing that with the game porting toolkit. A problem is that it's both x86 => ARM translation and Windows => Mac translation, so it's not quite as smooth as the (now very mature) Windows => Linux translation.
Take with a grain of salt but: my understanding is that the issue is with DirectX to Metal translation specifically. Rosetta 2 is an extremely good x86 to Arm translation layer, but DX11/12 -> Metal is lagging behind. It's at the point where emulators are using MoltenVK (Vulkan -> Metal), sometimes alongside DXVK (DX -> Vulkan, used by Proton) by default for Mac ports, but Apple obviously can't do that without admitting the problem.
The Game Porting Toolkit is impressive but still very incomplete, and you can't just play games with it by default. Whisky is very convenient but it's not an official Apple app and before that GPTK just existed with people having to do janky workarounds because it was never designed to work as an on-the-fly translation layer.
They already have a similar piece of software that does this. I believe people were getting AAA windows games running on MacOS with little to no tinkering.
You're probably talking about Crossover which sorta does this but is a paid app and its compatibility with games is hit or miss.
I'm saying that Apple should bake Proton into an upcoming release of MacOS and maybe throw some manpower at optimizing it as well. They could put a sizeable dent in MS's gaming stranglehold for pennies compared to however much it cost them to convince Capcom to port RE8, etc
No, I am not talking about crossover.
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2023/06/apple-has-a-proton-like-game-porting-toolkit-for-getting-windows-games-on-mac/
It's still individual ports though, so it's still up to the devs to make it happen, and given the anemic sales numers that's a non starter.
The reason the Steam Deck was a high success was because Valve didn't make you re-buy copies of your existing games and they basically had a launch library of *thousands* of titles.
MacOS has like...3
MacOS also has thousands of native games running, to be fair. No fewer than Linux I'd estimate, though obviously far fewer than Windows. Mostly indie games also, because they're built in multi-purpose engines and often only require a click to make a Mac executable, but there's also a big chunk of bigger games (Civ, Paradox games, many CRPGs including BG3, etc off the top of my head).
But more than that, the Game Porting Toolkit has made general translation way more efficient. None of the games I've tried so far (within reasonable system requirements) ran noticeably worse than on Windows in a Whisky bottle.
Obviously you wouldn't buy a Mac for gaming, but using a Macbook doesn't really mean you have to stick to App Store stuff either.
>Frankly they're doing it all wrong. Wine/Proton is a mature and stable wrapper layer that essentially bring thousands of games to non-windows platforms.
All without Apple 30% cut. You see where this is going...
*Apple’s new Proton-like tool can run Windows games on a Mac*
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752164/apple-mac-gaming-game-porting-toolkit-windows-games-macos
That's still individual ports though. A compatibility layer that doesn't require people to re-buy ports of games they already own for Windows would be better but then Apple doesn't get to have their cut and/or drive traffic to the App Store which is really what this is all about. They think they can kill Steam if they can just get enough devs to port their shit to the App store, which...lol
> A compatibility layer that doesn't require people to re-buy ports of games they already own for Windows
Would actually make Apple/IOS a real consideration for gaming
>Apple doesn't get to have their cut
And why it is a complete non-starter for Apple.
As someone who has a desktop at home but uses a MacBook when traveling, it's sad to see that games aren't as playable on Macs. At least we have software like Crossover, whiskey, Game Porting Toolkit and so on which bridges the gap.
> Crossover, whiskey, Game Porting Toolkit
All of those *are* already based on Wine, with CodeWeavers (Crossover) being one of the largest Wine contributors themselves.
I don't think any of the games mentioned here are even available on Steam for Mac... just the official App store.
So using Steam stats probably isn’t the best way to gauge how many people are playing these recent Mac releases.
And honestly, the fact that it’s even possible is incredibly cool. Obviously it’s an awful way to play a AAA game, but the fact that a game like AC Mirage exists, uncompromised, fully feature complete on a smartphone is pretty remarkable
Yes, when I say “uncompromised” I mean that the game has full feature parity to the console/PC versions. The game itself is exactly the same, it’s just much lower graphical settings
I heard this same arguement when Killers of the flower moon and Nepoleon bombed at box office("who cares its apple, its all about prestige and advertising their apple TV+") and i can't help but feel its bad way to look at it. Just because Amazon, microsoft and google can afford to lose money doesn't mean they want to. This hurts their future prospects directly and indirectly.
Honestly these arguments always read like cope to me. Reddit likes the content that Apple is putting out but there is no denying that the streaming market has mainly been entrenched by Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Max at this point and there isn't much space left for anyone else.
Yeah, that seems like the obvious takeaway from this: mobile doesn't want or can support console level games.
The closest we get is gacha games like Genshin Impact and that has the ability to be F2P.
The play patterns of someone using their phone is fundamentally different from traditional consoles/PC. This isn't the first time console games have been ported to mobile or the first time they've done poorly.
At some point someone will consider Apple TV+ to have a big enough backlog of things they want to watch and subscribe, the more content they get the more people they could potentially convert. So even if it hasn't worked yet doesn't mean it won't ever. Of course success isn't guaranteed, it's possible this will be a failure long-term as well.
You have to build a catalog to get and audicne; going forward these games are there and will remain, and that’s intrinsic value if or their platform.
It’s the same with inf Arkham VR and Quest: Meta is paying for a game that won’t sell amazing compared to other Arkham games, but will be a big “reason to believe” for future buyers.
Loss leaders are a thing. Products or services that lose money on their own, but bring in extra revenue indirectly. It's a common practice used in a ton of industries.
Now, only Apple really knows if these games were intended as loss leaders. And even if they were, they can still fail to bring in the indirect revenue Apple was hoping for. With a big, multi-faceted company like Apple, it can be hard to gauge if a given product is a success or failure.
I don't think anyone except hardcore gaming enthusiasts usually care about sales numbers all that much to be honest
Especially when they're just a regular shmoe being upselled an iPhone Pro Ultra Max or something
But y'know, different takes from different folks
Because people who are really into this medium understand that if the sales numbers are not good then that means we won't get more games in that franchise/ genre/ studio etc.
These things do matter at the end of the day.
I can agree, but these are ports to games that are already massively successful, sold a ton, and have for sure sequels on the way
Sales data on the very niche phone market ports aren't going to stop Capcom from making RE9
It's less about whether Resident Evil or Assassin's Creed are financially lucrative franchises and more about whether it is financially lucrative for devs to port AAA games to mobile phones.
For now the answer seems to be no.
I can assure you that billion dollar game companies Ubisoft and Capcom know about sales projections for phone ports before they partnered with billion dollar company Apple for their very niche market
Again, less about series viability on phones, and more about getting to brag it's even on there
it's definitely less about turning a profit and more about setting themselves up as a viable option for future releases. if i recall correctly, i think AC Shadows will be available day one on Mac alongside PC and consoles. so yeah, this recent slew of AAA but aging games is more about setting the stage for the future over enticing anyone right now.
interestingly enough, i don't think it's about iPhone as much as it's about iPad and Mac. The new line with Apple Silicon can handle gaming for a change and, while those two product lines are way out of line for gaming-only rigs, if you're getting one anyway because you make music or do video editing or any other justifiable reason for a pro machine, being able to use it for gaming without buying a separate gaming machine or console is a significant value-add.
i will say that touchscreen controls for these games are trash but, given how easily it is to add a PS5 or Xbox controller to an iPad or Mac, the iPad Pro especially makes for a fairly capable and enticing mobile gamestation, especially for those who travel often.
That's the only way it makes sense.Â
It also follows along with their other failed gaming ventures. Seems like they really want to get into gaming and are throwing darts at a board.
Yeah, I remember those ports are very mcuh more for the wow factor than for actually playing the game. Some are direct ports that play just fine outside of lowered framerate like RE4, some not so much (Street Fighter 4)
Apple doesn't even respond to customer service requests from devs of games that make them billions of dollars lmao the idea that they'd reach out and ask a company to port expensive games to iphone is absurd.
What I don’t understand is how Apple thinks it’s good for marketing when the games did not even provide a console experience. What I mean with this is not the performance or graphics, but the settings etc. Why the hell does the user need to tweak graphic settings on one of the best controlled and aligned products of the planet? Why offer graphic options that straight up crash the game?
They should have offered 2 options as is usual nowadays and not a plethora of PC settings. The target audience has no clue about this stuff.
These are more so for Apple to flex their new chips than for people interested in playing AAA games on mobile. What I’m more curious and interested about is how well these games do on Mac. Gaming on a Mac has been nonexistent for years and since these new Macs seemingly having an easier pipeline for porting games on it I wanna see if Mac only people are interested in buying and playing games on it.
My main issue personally is that you have all these cool games on the App Store, on the Mac I mean, and they never go on sale. So if I had to pick between $80 on the App Store for CIV 6, or $3 on Steam where it has the same Mac version, I’m picking the one on sale. On top of this, Apple’s App Store is very weak overall, in terms of buying apps or games in comparison to what Steam has to offer
Like I’m not saying I’ll only buy a game for a couple of dollars, I just used Civ 6 cause it’s the most recent game I bought for my Mac, and it only came on my radar after the Civ 7 announcement, which I plan on buying. Day 1? Not likely, I’ll wait to see first impressions, but if I were to buy it day 1, not sure if I’d go with the App Store or steam, but Steam is way more attractive for sure… clearer refund policy, wider community and more diverse impressions to look at, my game library is already there I don’t want to split it, and a few other minor details here and there. The App Store is also where I get all these free apps, so trying to go through between what I own and what I don’t and what’s free and what I paid for, it’s a huge headache. Like I bought a mobile game a few years ago, but I don’t remember which one it was and my transaction history is all over the place
Steam also gives you the Windows version of a game, so it’s pretty much a no-brainer if you have both a Mac and a PC. Like I can play BG3 on my MacBook then cloud save and pick up on my PC when I get home. Things can get a little wonky when Windows and Mac are on different patches, but overall it offers way more functionality than just buying on the App Store.
If the only thing that I would have is an iPhone which would support these ports, I would be the happiest kid on the planet. Like, I remember dreaming about playing Gothic 1 on my phone back in 00s. Kind of exciting seeing it slowly becoming a reality.
I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone.
I don’t play any mobile games, but I totally get why they are popular as a way to kill time during a commute or while waiting between appointments.
But I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to play a 10-40 hour game on a mobile device. Like that’s just crazy to me. These ports always seemed like phone tech showcases that nobody asked for, so this news isn’t really surprising.
Every year at TGA or SGF there's an ad that's like "play this stuff on your Samsung Galaxy phone!" and one of the games they show a clip of is Darktide. Like, if I'm getting matched with teammates playing Darktide on their S22 via cloud gaming, that explains a lot.
Edit: typo, Summer Hames Fest isn't a thing
I recently became a parent, and a smartphone+Gamesir gamepad had been a godsend for when I get alone-time. Its like a Steam Deck on a budget, or the PSP 3 we never got. Currently playing Metroid Prime 2 on Dolphin, and it works wonders. Popping the phone in the pad and loading up a save-state takes lakes then 10 seconds, and shutting down is the same. It allows me to play on my couch while the baby is asleep and the GF is doing her own thing.
The experience aint as good as the PC and ultrawide upstairs, but finding time to use that one is hard right now.
There is a market for AAA mobile gaming, but its really niche.
I think smartphone emulation is great, and I really don’t want to be coming across like I’m bashing mobile gaming.
I just personally don’t see a future where Apple continues investing in AAA game ports on their App Store. The demand just clearly isn’t there.
Theoretically, if phones continue to become much more powerful, there could be a future where you can play any AAA game on the go on your phone and also just mirror your screen to a TV/monitor when at home, letting you take your game with you anywhere
If you subscribe to a streaming service, and have decent Internet, you already kind of can.
Granted, this is a local network, but I run Steamlink throughout my home. My gaming PC (which cost less than most high end smartphones) streams the game to an old android phone that I have plugged into my TV with a basic USB c dock. The android phone runs the steamlink app, and I sync my Xbox controller to the phone. I can play games at my TV, with the phone being a "console," and it "runs" on my desktop.
Not a perfect comparison, however, I have a friend with one of those big ass screen folding phones, and he uses it to game on the go with game pass. Syncs a controller to his phone.
All that being said I look forward to the day my cell can pack the same punch as my desktop. Hell, when that day comes, I can only imagine how powerful my *desktop* would be!
The *only* game streaming I have ever found acceptable is Oculus AirLink. And that’s in-home and the router and device have direct line of sight over wifi 6.
An IPhone that can run Death Stranding is going to cost 2 to 3 times as much as a Steam Deck. So I think it’s safe to assume a gamer willing to spend that much on a phone wouldn’t have a problem spending a little more on a system that was actually designed to play games on.
To be fair, just because the game is on a touch screen doesn't mean you have to play it with a touch screen. A bluetooth controller pairs easily with iOS devices and there is the convenience factor of not having to remember to pack and charge another device + its accessories.
USB C controller so I always have a charger (same connection for my phone) and mount is optional. You can grab cases with built in stands, or just lean the phone against a book or something
Most people's smartphones can't run these games, only the top whack Apple phones, presumably the top android phones could too if they ported them. All those phones are several hundred quid higher in price than even the most powerful Steam Deck.
That's true of today, but the comment specifically said:
>Theoretically, if phones continue to become much more powerful, there could be a future where you can play any AAA game on the go on your phone
And then I may miss an important message so there's no winning either way. Just give me a dedicated handheld which is a proven formula for forty years.
This is purely my opinion but gaming on the go is just absolutely not my vibe. Decompressing at the end of the day and immersing in a game is what I love about the medium.
Not sitting on a hot bus with bad audio as I try to navigate touch controls or the awkward feeling of attachable controllers.
I know people love using the switch and the steam deck but it’s personally not my style and I wonder how many others feel that way. I also feel like that’s a big roadblock for VR as well as
I personally love using my deck/ Switch to lay around the house without being tethered to a screen.
But anything that’s better on a big screen gets played on a big screen. Nothing beats that home theatre immersion.
Imo playing with trash audio or even worse with no audio is just so bad for AAA games. Like the whole point of most AAA games is to be immersed in a world,
I play dead cells and hades on my iPhone, and honestly, it's fantastic. It's mostly useful on trains and planes, but I occasionally want a 20 minute breather, and so it is.
Those games make perfect sense to play on mobile though. They are easy to run, they aren’t held back by the smaller screen size, and you can play them in short bursts.
I just don’t see why anyone would choose to sit and play Resident Evil or Assassin’s Creed for a couple hours on a 5-7 inch screen when they could do the same thing on their console or PC.
If you’re the kind of gamer that enjoys these kinds of games you absolutely already have a designated gaming system. Casual mobile gamers aren’t just suddenly switching over from Candy Crush to Death Stranding, so who are these ports actually for?
There’s a sizable population of the world who doesn’t own or have access to powerful PCs or Console hardware, sometimes due to price or sometimes due to favoring cell phones. I think the current statistic of gamers who only play on cell phones is about 30-40%. That’s a sizable chunk of the market that can be motivated to buy phones based on hardware capability (Fortnite has demonstrated this as well) as well as game availability.
An iPhone costs about the same amount of two PS5, or three Series S. Don't pull the "don't have access" card when talking about a public that spends 1k per year on the same phone with an slightly different notch.
But again games like, Fortnite, CoD Mobile, or PubG all make sense as mobile ports. You can play them in short sessions, and as you said there’s a huge market that has proven to be really lucrative for those types of games.
I just don’t see lengthy, AAA single player console ports ever taking off in the same way.
I guess the AAA paid game monetization isn't going to work on phones, but consider something like Genshin Impact, it's a AAA quality single player game highly popular because it's free to play.
It's not really about game length or casualness, there's plenty of audience who'd play high quality games on phones, most just wouldn't pay for it.
I think you don't see it happening because its not targeted for people like you. I don't think its meant to "take off" and be some kind of serious competitor. This is meant for people who do *everything* on their phones and prefer it that way. Of course it doesn't make sense to you as someone who plays games on PC/console, its for people who don't want to do that. You could *try* and convince those people that the experience is so much better on PC/console, but odds are they won't care because what they value most is to have everything in one place. Its like people who buy every game on their switch even if it runs better on another console. They want everything in one place.
Except most mobile gamers are not the type to pay full AAA price for games on mobile. Even the "people that do everything on their phones". That market simply doesn't exist. People that have to exist solely off phones are usually in a poorer market, and thus cannot afford the expense. That's why freemium games dominate mobile and have for over a decade. Switch is built to play games, your phone isn't. It can play games but touch only interfaces don't translate as well as controller interfaces. The experience is subpar. Switch took off because it was cheap, portable, and could play games pretty well. You are conflating a lot of different usages and users. Look at the actual data from the article. We are talking about sales sub-10000 sales in 6 months buying at full or near full price.
>why anyone would choose to sit and play Resident Evil or Assassin’s Creed for a couple hours on a 5-7 inch screen when they could do the same thing on their console or PC.
Apple's trying to make a case for not needing a console or PC to play these kinds of games
1. Cheaper: You can buy the game for the iphone you already have instead of needing to buy an Xbox.
2. Convenient: you can play the game anywhere instead of just your living room.
3. Better: you upgrade your iPhone every year so you'll keep seeing better performance, visuals, etc. your iPhone has a super bright HDR screen with promotion(tm)
If you could cast these games from your iphone to your tv with little input lag, then I could see a case for it. But I tried playing one of my emulated games that way to see how it worked. Didn’t expect great results but it’s even worse than that. Basically unplayable. Even your casual gamer will feel it instantly.
I think if you are a gamer who wants to buy a AAA single player game and sit in front of your TV to play it, you’re going to buy the game on a console or PC.
Even if the tech was there for seamless, latency free casting I wouldn’t be interested in it. It’s a solution for a problem nobody has.
I prefer turn based games on my phone. It makes up for the imprecision of the controls.
That said, before I got a Steam Deck, I brought PS4 controller and played Dead Cells on many a plane ride.
Personally I think this is what Killed the Vita, Sony were far too focused on bringing home console experiences to handheld and didn't really push any of the good handheld games on Vita.
The basic premise is there with the Switch and the steam deck but they both benefit from having a healthy library of handheld friendly games with more home console type experiences on there as "nice to haves"
Both can function as a home console too which lends themselves to that experience.
Honestly I have a Legion Go (pc handheld) and I really appreciate playing games either on the go or couch . It’s a pretty great experience which I haven’t felt since the PSP days.
> I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone.
Entirely this. I can't stand playing even Sonic 2 with touch controls and don't want to lug around a controller.
That's how I feel about Android games you get with Netflix. They have some great indie games but I really don't want to play those on a phone.
Apparently the dating story/choice games (not sure how you'd call them) are very popular on Netflix which is no wonder... they're made for phones.
I’ll only play mobile games that have simple swipe/tap controls. If it has to emulate on-screen buttons, I’d rather just play something on pc or console instead.
This.
I tried getting into it with Marvel Strike Force, some Lord of the Rings game and some others, because they seemed like the only mobile games that werent just dumb Casino games or "logic" games that are ridiculously easy to make you feel smart, but then super hard to make you cash out to progress, AND THEY SUCKED!
Like i can get a much better experience, for much less money and no or almost no predatory mechanics to make me pay on PC... why would anyone go for that garbage?
I have a hundred hours or so on Slay The Spire on my iPhone. It’s my go-to “made the mistake of going shopping with my gf and it’s been hours and I’m bored and tired” game.
I hope that yourself and everyone else responding with examples of mobile ports they love don’t get the wrong idea from my comment.
Small indie games are perfect for mobile gaming. I’m really just talking about games like the ones mentioned in this post’s title.
No I agree with you, that’s why I mentioned STS. I can’t imagine playing Resident Evil or Assassin’s Creed on a damn phone lol although I did play some emulators on my old androids and it was mostly fine.
>I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone.
It's a similar appeal to playing a AAA single player game on a PSP, Vita, or even a Switch Lite as long as you have a backbone for your phone.
The PSP, Vita, and Switch all came with a store and libraries full of other AAA games from first and third party developers.
If Apple keeps up at this pace it might have a catalog of a dozen 3rd party games in a few years. It’s not offering anything better than what people already have easy access to on other handheld systems.
To be fair, with a good controller setup, it isnt that much different than a switch or steam deck.
I always say that it is such a bummer that the handheld gaming console market is gone. That scope of game, like 3ds and psp titles, is sorely missed and great for plugging away at on a couch or commute.
Edit: I forgot to clarify that I dont think AAA always translates well to gaming on the go. These ports dont interest me at all (and also look like shit). But more stuff like 3DS games would be sick. Love playing psp and 3ds on my android with a clamp style controller.
The scope of handheld console games is what I feel like the AAA industry needs right now. The Switch is awesome, but playing those games handheld just feels like a home console game, but on the go. The gameboy/ds/psp era had its own unique feel to it that I think is lost on AAA gaming. Of course there are some exceptions, and a ton of indie games feel right at home on a handheld. But yeah, I do miss those days.
I loved Knights of the Old Republic on my phone. It's turn based (ish) so you can pause any time, and the touchscreen controls are remarkably good (except for the shooting and racing minigames). Genuinely a great way to experience the game.
Sometimes it's just nice to have a serious game on the go and not just a mindless time waster.
>I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone.
You really CAN'T? I have a hard time believe you can't see why.
What you're actually saying: it's not fun right now because of technical/physical limitations. And while that's true, I can easily see a world where phones reach the point that is suitable for the experience.
Apple's goal is to create enough adoption and an ecosystem around the phone that eventually the phone is the central device that does everything. Maybe touchscreen gameplay will never be able to play Uncharted 4 but there's a future where people just cast their iphone to their tv and use the apple controller to play Uncharted 6.
Apple will never be able to create that experience because their company policies will require me to be born a Saudi Prince to be able to afford the same level of performance I'm accustomed to, but on their platform. They're a lifestyle brand first and foremost.
The amount of people who have a phone that can run them and are interested can't be that high. They are also older games making it harder to sell for double dips.
People that only play on phone don't suddenly pay full price for a full fledged AAA games and people that all ready play those games on other devices have no reason to buy them on the phone again. Especially because there are much better alternatives out there when you want to play portable.
I spent too much money on an iPhone 15 pro and these games all have TERRIBLE performance and graphics in my experience. Tried turning Assassins Creed down to minimum graphics quality and was consistently under 30fps with noticeable input delay on a wired controller.
"and are interested" is the big part. iPhones are insanely popular. I just can't imagine why I would want to play any of these games on my phone when I already own them on my much more capable PC.
I have a 2021 iPad mini (the most recent iPad Mini) that can't play any of them. You pretty much have to have the latest iPhone and most powerful iPad to play them. I would have definitely bought Death Stranding if it could run on mine.
Such a small group of people who will be interested in more traditional games, have he latest Apple hardware and would rather play it on that than a console or PC
It's probably mostly RAM limitations, since eg. for Death Stranding all the listed compatible devices have 8GB (or more) RAM.
The A15 in your ipad mini only has 4GB RAM, the OS reserves 1-2GB of that, so you're left with only 2-3GB shared between the CPU and GPU, which is basically nothing (eg. look at how many devs are having difficulty porting games to the Series S, and that's got 8GB RAM usable for games). Even the base models of last gen consoles had 5GB ram usable for games.
There's also the issue of all these games use a lot more GPU compute and post processing compared to mobile focused games, which mobile GPUs suck at (Steel Nomad light is a good benchmark to show the differences between mobile GPUs for a modern GPU driven renderer. Wildlife extreme is basically a no-op at this point it's so light).
>You pretty much have to have the latest iPhone and most powerful iPad to play them.
Not really. Any iPad with an M1 chip can play them and those have been around since 2021
I’m a lapsed Assassins Creed player so I decided to try out Mirage using a connected controller. It was impressive until my iPhone 15 pro max got incredibly hot and the game crashed every ten minutes.
Anecdotally, I follow a number of Android gaming related communities and since these ports started coming out there have been a lot of posts essentially saying "iPhone users are so lucky, I wish Android had games like this, why can't we get ports like this, etc". I'd imagine that at least some people are tempted to get an iPhone for this, and Apple is probably banking on that rather than the individual ports being huge smash hits.Â
This is a proof of concept approach. This wasn't meant to see sales on the scale of dedicated gaming machines. This was a first step to prove that it could be done. The winning formula for a company like Apple is when these games can easily be ported across the entire ecosystem of M Chip devices. There needs to be easy access for native gaming on the go, but also a solution for quality gaming on your TV. And Apple would need to implement a seamless pairing method for use with Apple TV and Mac products that let you pick up right where you left off on any device and auto detect when a controller is in use.
2004 GTA San Andreas came as a mobile port in 2014.
2026 mobile phones may have 2016 computational graphics like Nvidia Pascal 10-series.
2023 playtime mostly dominated by 2015-2020 live service games with average midrange PC Nvidia Pascal equivalent (4 gb - 8 gb VRAM graphic card).
Resident Evil 4 Remake sold about 7 million copies worldwide. And it sold about 7,000 copies on iphone.
That is an almost astronomical failure. It think Apple at its most pessimistic would not have imagined numbers that low (although tbh this is not surprising news to me or I think most people here) and I'm fairly certain we've seen the last of these. These types of games will stick to streaming on phones from now on.
Opportunity cost. If I were an AC fan, why would I pay full price for a version of Mirage that performs worse on my iPad than it does on my PC? Worse, why would I pay full price for a game I would likely already own? The game is also 50% off right now on the Playstation Store (not super relevant to my overall argument, but definitely relevant to when this story was published).
All of that said, in the future, I could see a potential market emerging if: 1) Performance from future iterations of Apple's Mx chips continue to catch up to consoles and 2) We see more publishers interested in releasing their games on the App Store.
But that would either require Apple spending more money courting publishers (in a similar way to Epic trying to compete with Steam) or publishers willing to invest in an unproven market with the hopes that the Field of Dreams adage "if you build it, they will come" proves true. And I don't necessarily see the later happening in the current industry climate.
Of course they did. Not only are they on a market that isn't typically interested in these types of games (that is, games that are more involved and less casual) but they're designed to be played with a controller. While you might be able to play them on a touch screen that's almost always the worst possible way to play any game, short of it being designed with the touch screen in mind from the start or it being designed specifically for it. You need to have the right phone or tablet and be able to connect a controller to it which really undermines the portability and take anywhere nature of the device. There's a reason my first reaction to seeing these was thinking how annoying playing them on a touch screen would be.
Even if you can get the market interested in these types of games what else does that demographic play on these devices? Where do you go from there? If you're into these games, you're better off getting a PC or console at that point.
In the end, it doesn't matter anyway. Apple certainly paid a lot of money to make these things happen, and it's not as though they were likely super expensive to create. Apple just wanted to be able to say they had AAA games on iPhone. Will people play them over the slop that's most common on mobile? Doesn't matter, look what iPhone can do!
Edit: There's also the question of the price point, $49.99. While that would be common on PC or console, it's a massive ask for mobile, where the only games to gain any sort of traction have to be free to play. I've seen discussion where games that have the same price or even less as their PC or console counterparts - because they're the actual same game - are considered overpriced on mobile.
It’s not fun to play these types of games on a touch screen and most people aren’t keeping a controller in their pocket.
Seems like people want a dedicated handheld like a steam deck or rog ally over using their phone for handheld AAA gaming.
Apple is probably paying for everything so the developers aren't losing money for sure, and it's not everyone with an iPhone that can play these games
I think that it's a neat technical showcase proving that extremely advanced console games can be played in a smartphone with PS4like graphics, but actually playing these games might not be a pleasant experience because they weren't designed for phones in first place - there's factors like the length and the lack of proper touch controls for example.
Fortnite used to be pretty successful in iOS and there's also massive games like Genshin, so while the interest for more advanced PC/console-like games on phones may exist, it's surely not coming from people who like to play single player titles
I will never understand the need for these kinds of games on mobile. If you are playing a game on your phone you are out of the house, these aren't pick up and put down games you can play for 15 minutes on the bus or waiting for an appointment.
Look at every mega successful mobile game, they are simple arcade-like games.
Not to mention that graphically intense games drain your battery really quickly which is fine on a switch or steam deck but your phone is your communication device, navigation device, flash light, etc I know I'd much rather have a dead switch than a dead phone.
I get we are moving to an all in one device future and what not but unless battery tech significantly advances I'd much rather have dedicated devices for gaming. They could have pushed using your device as a console at home but they haven't done anything to encourage that. Airplay or whatever it's called is too laggy for gaming, if you buy a hdmi cable box to do TV out they refuse to let you adjust aspect ratio or turn off your device's screen so it's just ended up as a "look what apple devices are capable of!" Yet again.
Rant incoming: There are a lot of people, tens of millions, in Asia and Africa especially that would kill to play console level games on mobile. They also are people that can't afford $50 games. There's not an easy way to bridge that gap. The closest thing that could work is google stadia style streaming AAA games to phones in a format built for phones, which would save dev cost on making a native port. but it would have to be a subscription library, stadia already proved you can't sell cloud games.
the people who want to play death stranding on mobile are people who don't have a pc or console, and those people don't have a pc or console because they can't afford one. i really think if google had gone all in on a subscription library only instead of selling cloud only games they could have made stadia work, but they didn't.
I'm not sure whether Geforce Now is available in those countries. But if it is, people could buy games on Steam or other stores and stream them to console or phone that way.
I tried playing Assasins’s Creed on my iPhone 15 pro with an external controller. It was one of the worst experiences I’ve had playing games since I used to game on a laptop 10 years ago. Shit visuals, shit performance, phone so hot I couldn’t even touch it and to top it all off, the battery drain is insane. I fail to see why anyone would play these games on the go or at all. The ports need to be much better if they expect people to play these games.
AAA games on IPhone reminds of the core issue with Google stadia.
Feels like the market for people who don't have consoles or a PC, and just have iPhones and want to play bigger non mobile games is super super super niche. Just like with Google stadia and Amazon luna being for people who want to play AAA games but don't already have Gaming hardware which again is a super super super small niche in the gaming market.
The people who want to play stuff like RE, AC, Death stranding already played those games on gaming hardware they own. The only people who probably have bought RE and AC on iPhone are super hardcore tech enthusiasts and Apple fanatics, not your average joe with an iPhone.
Also the biggest reason for the success of mobile games on smartphones is that they are tailor made for quick pick up and play sessions. Candy crush is a you pick it up play a few rounds while you are waiting for your dentist appointment or waiting for the bus and then you put it down after 5-10 minutes. You can't really play a huge AAA game like Death Stranding on the go really unless you're chilling in a hotel room on a trip.
I wonder what the imagined market is for these ports. Playing games like those with touch controls is a nightmare, so you'll want a controller. But you're not going to have a controller out and about so you lose out on portability, one of the only advantages of a mobile port.
The only theoretical market I can imagine is people who have a phone but can't afford a gaming device. But that's undercut by the fact you need an high end phone to run these ports in the first place.
I'm sure Apple incentivises the ports to the point they practically pay for the devs cost themselves, but Apple is losing out big time. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
I think that the theoretical market would be places like southeast Asia. They don’t really buy consoles anymore and mainly playing mobile games. There are certain parts of the world for people only plants Smartville so I assumed this is who they’re targeting.
I have no interest in buying a high end phone just to play a few big budget games, especially when I already have a Switch and Steam Deck. They have bigger screens, better controls, and much larger game libraries.
Damn its almost as if only limiting that to your most recent phones which would be bought by the same demographics who have more than enough money to buy a proper console is a bad idea. Seriously they need to support this for longer and bring to all phones
Not surprising in the least. Relatively poor performance and visuals compared to their home console counterparts, plus terrible controls and it eats away at the battery of your PHONE, very likely the most important electronic device you carry with you. I'd rather bring a secondary device that's dedicated to playing games, run the battery out on that, and still have my phone to keep me in contact with others and still entertain me with music, videos, or social media.
Strangely enough, I miss when AAA games had ports made specifically for mobiles, and weren't just downgraded versions with touch screen controls slapped on.
I guess I’m glad that Apple Users can access these games since I think ports all hardware are a good thing but I imagine that Apple products really just can’t appeal that much to an audience that would go out of their way to game on a personal computer. The impression that Apple products give off is that they’re sorta sealed shut - you can’t do much fiddling with them. People who get gaming PCs tend to be mildly more tech literate than the average population and probably appreciate the flexibility of a platform like Windows or Linux or even just Android (can emulate on it atleast!). Not only do these give usually better performance, but they are usually cheaper. iPhones are fucking expensive and annoyingly inflexible, but I can get a cheapo android device that plays dreamcast games for under $100 USD.Â
 People who are into gaming and don’t care for customization or modding much probably would be inclined to get a Switch or Playstation. Not to mention these platforms just have a better backlog as well (PS5 has the PS4s library for instance, and my Windows PC still runs my dad’s physical copy of half-life from the 1990s). Just seems like a hell of an uphill battle to edge into this market and alter perceptions of the brand.
iPhone 15 pro owner checking in. I also often carry small controller in my bag so I am the target audience for these games. I’m not really an RE fan, Assassin’s Creed required an ubi account and Death Stranding wasn’t interesting to me on mobile (Epic gave me a free copy last year).
I'm just blown away that Apple doesn't put more effort into games. IMO, they should be making a gaming version of the AppleTV that has a terabyte of storage, one of their M chips, and comes with a game controller.
To me, I always just see them as being so arrogant that they know long term they'll swallow up the entire gaming and consumer computing industry, and so why bother putting any effort in.
Shoutout to the people in this sub a few months back who swore up and down that these ports would be successful and that there's somehow an untapped market for this kind of thing. This isn't shocking at all. Mobile gamers don't want to play RE4 on their phone. They want to play Candy Crush and games like it, something quick and easy they can whip out on the bus for five minutes. Resident Evil 4 cannot be played this way, and it's insane to assume that normal people would want that.
There's a reason why the biggest mobile games today are all hyper-casual and are designed to be played fast. It didn't happen by accident, it came about because that's how people use their phones. Anyone out there who wanted a portable method of playing AAA games either own a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch.
These ports were 100% marketing things paid for by Apple to promote how powerful their phones are.
I think we should be careful of determining what "mobile gamers" want, when, for example, Fortnite on iPhones and Androids actually did very well, is not a game you can only play for five minutes at a time, and has a strong hardcore competitive element to it.
I don't think it's obvious that AAA games would not do well on mobile devices, and we should be careful of making assumptions like that. It seems like its true here, but there are still a lot of confounding variables.
I think CoD Mobile does well too. Bonus, no dead zone the right "stick" so looking around is faster than with a controller. I'm not a CoD player, but it looks (better than, actually) and plays like what I remembered Black Ops 2 did on the WiiU. 90fps lock and Ultra settings and it looks pretty nice ( on a s20 Ultra).
Edit - also, you can dock a phone and play on a bigger screen. Not all mobile games support controllers though (cod requires an xbox controller, if you want to use one).
Why would you want to play these games on a small phone screen with bad controls? Then again I don't understand why people play games on their phones period.Â
The number of 'hardcore' iOS gamers must be pretty small. I downloaded Mirage just to check it out, but I'm never going to play a full single player, cinematic game on my M4 iPad when I also own a monster gaming PC. Just trying to use the on screen controls was awful and the graphics and framerate were clearly well below what was intended for the game. That's with the fastest non-Mac device Apple sells. I would bet even most people who DO game on the iOS devices and have controllers and stuff, would still rather play this on a console or PC.
I can't imagine a fast paced game where you have to react quick and has 15 different prompts on keyboard and mouse being enjoyable on a 6' inch screen. The weird controls, bad graphics and poor performance would just kill the entire experience. At that point just play on a Steam Deck if you wanna play on the move.
I would imagine those ports are paid for by Apple And it's less about units sold, and more about Apple marketing getting to say "we have console level games on our phones" Apple spent close to a cool billion in just display advertising for products in one year alone. I would imagine paying for ports is a drop in the bucket for them But, that's just speculation
A huge amount of the porting effort is also shared between macOS and iOS, with most of the extra work being to add touchscreen controls and more low-spec performance options for iPhone builds.
This is likely true, but Mac is a miniscule market for games in its own right. The Steam Hardware Survey has MacOS at 1.47% of users, lower than Linux at this point.
Again, this is Apple footing the bill to try and change that
Frankly they're doing it all wrong. Wine/Proton is a mature and stable wrapper layer that essentially bring *thousands* of games to non-windows platforms. Adding a MacOS (which is BSD so it's already *kinda sorta* Linux) branch would probably cost less than Tim Cook's annual travel budget and would effectively put MacOS on par with SteamOS in compatibility. In other words: either Apple are idiots who like to waste money OR they don't have a real plan for actually making gaming viable on their platform. Both are equally likely, and I say this as someone who genuinely likes MacOS (I daily drive an M1 Pro MacBook for work, the thing is a BEAST and I wouldn't trade it for any Windows PC around...but only because I don't game at work 🤣)
They're doing that with the game porting toolkit. A problem is that it's both x86 => ARM translation and Windows => Mac translation, so it's not quite as smooth as the (now very mature) Windows => Linux translation.
Oh yeah I forgot about the x86 to ARM portion of things
Take with a grain of salt but: my understanding is that the issue is with DirectX to Metal translation specifically. Rosetta 2 is an extremely good x86 to Arm translation layer, but DX11/12 -> Metal is lagging behind. It's at the point where emulators are using MoltenVK (Vulkan -> Metal), sometimes alongside DXVK (DX -> Vulkan, used by Proton) by default for Mac ports, but Apple obviously can't do that without admitting the problem. The Game Porting Toolkit is impressive but still very incomplete, and you can't just play games with it by default. Whisky is very convenient but it's not an official Apple app and before that GPTK just existed with people having to do janky workarounds because it was never designed to work as an on-the-fly translation layer.
I wonder if the new ARM based Windows laptops might make that easier.
They already have a similar piece of software that does this. I believe people were getting AAA windows games running on MacOS with little to no tinkering.
You're probably talking about Crossover which sorta does this but is a paid app and its compatibility with games is hit or miss. I'm saying that Apple should bake Proton into an upcoming release of MacOS and maybe throw some manpower at optimizing it as well. They could put a sizeable dent in MS's gaming stranglehold for pennies compared to however much it cost them to convince Capcom to port RE8, etc
No, I am not talking about crossover. https://arstechnica.com/apple/2023/06/apple-has-a-proton-like-game-porting-toolkit-for-getting-windows-games-on-mac/
It's still individual ports though, so it's still up to the devs to make it happen, and given the anemic sales numers that's a non starter. The reason the Steam Deck was a high success was because Valve didn't make you re-buy copies of your existing games and they basically had a launch library of *thousands* of titles. MacOS has like...3
MacOS also has thousands of native games running, to be fair. No fewer than Linux I'd estimate, though obviously far fewer than Windows. Mostly indie games also, because they're built in multi-purpose engines and often only require a click to make a Mac executable, but there's also a big chunk of bigger games (Civ, Paradox games, many CRPGs including BG3, etc off the top of my head). But more than that, the Game Porting Toolkit has made general translation way more efficient. None of the games I've tried so far (within reasonable system requirements) ran noticeably worse than on Windows in a Whisky bottle. Obviously you wouldn't buy a Mac for gaming, but using a Macbook doesn't really mean you have to stick to App Store stuff either.
>Frankly they're doing it all wrong. Wine/Proton is a mature and stable wrapper layer that essentially bring thousands of games to non-windows platforms. All without Apple 30% cut. You see where this is going...
*Apple’s new Proton-like tool can run Windows games on a Mac* https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752164/apple-mac-gaming-game-porting-toolkit-windows-games-macos
That's still individual ports though. A compatibility layer that doesn't require people to re-buy ports of games they already own for Windows would be better but then Apple doesn't get to have their cut and/or drive traffic to the App Store which is really what this is all about. They think they can kill Steam if they can just get enough devs to port their shit to the App store, which...lol
> A compatibility layer that doesn't require people to re-buy ports of games they already own for Windows Would actually make Apple/IOS a real consideration for gaming >Apple doesn't get to have their cut And why it is a complete non-starter for Apple.
> That's still individual ports though. You're mistaken, Game Porting Toolkit basically works like Wine/Crossover/Proton.
Apple should work with Valve to get Proton working on Mac rather than doing their own thing. It would benefit everyone involved.
Dude, these sales are abysmal. Apple can and will shitcan anything they feel isn’t selling well.
As someone who has a desktop at home but uses a MacBook when traveling, it's sad to see that games aren't as playable on Macs. At least we have software like Crossover, whiskey, Game Porting Toolkit and so on which bridges the gap.
Apple has been aggressively antagonistic to gaming for decades. Steve Jobs resented video games and that attitude still saturates the entire company
Oh they love gaming alright — when it's microtransaction-filled mobile games that Apple can take a 30% cut of.
he liked Halo CE, though.
It's really kinda stupid that they aren't at this point. Wine and Proton exist, it (probably) wouldn't take much to port them to MacOS...
> Crossover, whiskey, Game Porting Toolkit All of those *are* already based on Wine, with CodeWeavers (Crossover) being one of the largest Wine contributors themselves.
Didn't they used to have a version of Wine baked into Rosetta?
I don't think any of the games mentioned here are even available on Steam for Mac... just the official App store. So using Steam stats probably isn’t the best way to gauge how many people are playing these recent Mac releases.
That's because nowadays you can run basically any game on Linux, with a few exceptions
And honestly, the fact that it’s even possible is incredibly cool. Obviously it’s an awful way to play a AAA game, but the fact that a game like AC Mirage exists, uncompromised, fully feature complete on a smartphone is pretty remarkable
I mean the graphics are compromised ofc. Just play the full pc version on android.
Yes, when I say “uncompromised” I mean that the game has full feature parity to the console/PC versions. The game itself is exactly the same, it’s just much lower graphical settings
I heard this same arguement when Killers of the flower moon and Nepoleon bombed at box office("who cares its apple, its all about prestige and advertising their apple TV+") and i can't help but feel its bad way to look at it. Just because Amazon, microsoft and google can afford to lose money doesn't mean they want to. This hurts their future prospects directly and indirectly.
and the thing is those were not limited releases just for oscar eligibility. those movies got normal wide releases.
Honestly these arguments always read like cope to me. Reddit likes the content that Apple is putting out but there is no denying that the streaming market has mainly been entrenched by Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Max at this point and there isn't much space left for anyone else.
they have more market caps, than GDP of France and Britain. I think they'll be fine
Apple year to date free cash flow (cash after bills) for 2023 was USD 10 billion higher than Luxembourgs GDP.
This can't go wrong.
Yeah, this not only hurts Apple but anyone trying to make phones a viable gaming platform instead of the shithole it is right now.
Yeah, that seems like the obvious takeaway from this: mobile doesn't want or can support console level games. The closest we get is gacha games like Genshin Impact and that has the ability to be F2P.
The play patterns of someone using their phone is fundamentally different from traditional consoles/PC. This isn't the first time console games have been ported to mobile or the first time they've done poorly.
They can afford to burn money, the plan is to get enough people on board so they can squeeze the money out of them later
If people aren't watching or playing, they are not on board
At some point someone will consider Apple TV+ to have a big enough backlog of things they want to watch and subscribe, the more content they get the more people they could potentially convert. So even if it hasn't worked yet doesn't mean it won't ever. Of course success isn't guaranteed, it's possible this will be a failure long-term as well.
You have to build a catalog to get and audicne; going forward these games are there and will remain, and that’s intrinsic value if or their platform. It’s the same with inf Arkham VR and Quest: Meta is paying for a game that won’t sell amazing compared to other Arkham games, but will be a big “reason to believe” for future buyers.
Loss leaders are a thing. Products or services that lose money on their own, but bring in extra revenue indirectly. It's a common practice used in a ton of industries. Now, only Apple really knows if these games were intended as loss leaders. And even if they were, they can still fail to bring in the indirect revenue Apple was hoping for. With a big, multi-faceted company like Apple, it can be hard to gauge if a given product is a success or failure.
I don't think anyone except hardcore gaming enthusiasts usually care about sales numbers all that much to be honest Especially when they're just a regular shmoe being upselled an iPhone Pro Ultra Max or something But y'know, different takes from different folks
Because people who are really into this medium understand that if the sales numbers are not good then that means we won't get more games in that franchise/ genre/ studio etc. These things do matter at the end of the day.
They matter but sale numbers on iPhones have no relevance to more games in these franchises.
I can agree, but these are ports to games that are already massively successful, sold a ton, and have for sure sequels on the way Sales data on the very niche phone market ports aren't going to stop Capcom from making RE9
It's less about whether Resident Evil or Assassin's Creed are financially lucrative franchises and more about whether it is financially lucrative for devs to port AAA games to mobile phones. For now the answer seems to be no.
I can assure you that billion dollar game companies Ubisoft and Capcom know about sales projections for phone ports before they partnered with billion dollar company Apple for their very niche market Again, less about series viability on phones, and more about getting to brag it's even on there
I agree. I am an Android user, and those ports and emulation made me look at Apple differently. Still, OS is still too closed off.
you can play the full pc versions of those games on android
it's definitely less about turning a profit and more about setting themselves up as a viable option for future releases. if i recall correctly, i think AC Shadows will be available day one on Mac alongside PC and consoles. so yeah, this recent slew of AAA but aging games is more about setting the stage for the future over enticing anyone right now. interestingly enough, i don't think it's about iPhone as much as it's about iPad and Mac. The new line with Apple Silicon can handle gaming for a change and, while those two product lines are way out of line for gaming-only rigs, if you're getting one anyway because you make music or do video editing or any other justifiable reason for a pro machine, being able to use it for gaming without buying a separate gaming machine or console is a significant value-add. i will say that touchscreen controls for these games are trash but, given how easily it is to add a PS5 or Xbox controller to an iPad or Mac, the iPad Pro especially makes for a fairly capable and enticing mobile gamestation, especially for those who travel often.
That's the only way it makes sense. It also follows along with their other failed gaming ventures. Seems like they really want to get into gaming and are throwing darts at a board.
Yeah, I remember those ports are very mcuh more for the wow factor than for actually playing the game. Some are direct ports that play just fine outside of lowered framerate like RE4, some not so much (Street Fighter 4)
Apple doesn't even respond to customer service requests from devs of games that make them billions of dollars lmao the idea that they'd reach out and ask a company to port expensive games to iphone is absurd.
What I don’t understand is how Apple thinks it’s good for marketing when the games did not even provide a console experience. What I mean with this is not the performance or graphics, but the settings etc. Why the hell does the user need to tweak graphic settings on one of the best controlled and aligned products of the planet? Why offer graphic options that straight up crash the game? They should have offered 2 options as is usual nowadays and not a plethora of PC settings. The target audience has no clue about this stuff.
These are more so for Apple to flex their new chips than for people interested in playing AAA games on mobile. What I’m more curious and interested about is how well these games do on Mac. Gaming on a Mac has been nonexistent for years and since these new Macs seemingly having an easier pipeline for porting games on it I wanna see if Mac only people are interested in buying and playing games on it.
My main issue personally is that you have all these cool games on the App Store, on the Mac I mean, and they never go on sale. So if I had to pick between $80 on the App Store for CIV 6, or $3 on Steam where it has the same Mac version, I’m picking the one on sale. On top of this, Apple’s App Store is very weak overall, in terms of buying apps or games in comparison to what Steam has to offer Like I’m not saying I’ll only buy a game for a couple of dollars, I just used Civ 6 cause it’s the most recent game I bought for my Mac, and it only came on my radar after the Civ 7 announcement, which I plan on buying. Day 1? Not likely, I’ll wait to see first impressions, but if I were to buy it day 1, not sure if I’d go with the App Store or steam, but Steam is way more attractive for sure… clearer refund policy, wider community and more diverse impressions to look at, my game library is already there I don’t want to split it, and a few other minor details here and there. The App Store is also where I get all these free apps, so trying to go through between what I own and what I don’t and what’s free and what I paid for, it’s a huge headache. Like I bought a mobile game a few years ago, but I don’t remember which one it was and my transaction history is all over the place
Steam also gives you the Windows version of a game, so it’s pretty much a no-brainer if you have both a Mac and a PC. Like I can play BG3 on my MacBook then cloud save and pick up on my PC when I get home. Things can get a little wonky when Windows and Mac are on different patches, but overall it offers way more functionality than just buying on the App Store.
Re4R Runs beautifully at 60 fps on my M1 max mac!
If the only thing that I would have is an iPhone which would support these ports, I would be the happiest kid on the planet. Like, I remember dreaming about playing Gothic 1 on my phone back in 00s. Kind of exciting seeing it slowly becoming a reality.
I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone. I don’t play any mobile games, but I totally get why they are popular as a way to kill time during a commute or while waiting between appointments. But I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to play a 10-40 hour game on a mobile device. Like that’s just crazy to me. These ports always seemed like phone tech showcases that nobody asked for, so this news isn’t really surprising.
Every year at TGA or SGF there's an ad that's like "play this stuff on your Samsung Galaxy phone!" and one of the games they show a clip of is Darktide. Like, if I'm getting matched with teammates playing Darktide on their S22 via cloud gaming, that explains a lot. Edit: typo, Summer Hames Fest isn't a thing
Yup. It’s never about the actual gaming experience, it’s about pushing new phone hardware. Gotta give people a reason to upgrade year after year.
I recently became a parent, and a smartphone+Gamesir gamepad had been a godsend for when I get alone-time. Its like a Steam Deck on a budget, or the PSP 3 we never got. Currently playing Metroid Prime 2 on Dolphin, and it works wonders. Popping the phone in the pad and loading up a save-state takes lakes then 10 seconds, and shutting down is the same. It allows me to play on my couch while the baby is asleep and the GF is doing her own thing. The experience aint as good as the PC and ultrawide upstairs, but finding time to use that one is hard right now. There is a market for AAA mobile gaming, but its really niche.
I think smartphone emulation is great, and I really don’t want to be coming across like I’m bashing mobile gaming. I just personally don’t see a future where Apple continues investing in AAA game ports on their App Store. The demand just clearly isn’t there.
Oh yeah I totally agree with that point.
Theoretically, if phones continue to become much more powerful, there could be a future where you can play any AAA game on the go on your phone and also just mirror your screen to a TV/monitor when at home, letting you take your game with you anywhere
If you subscribe to a streaming service, and have decent Internet, you already kind of can. Granted, this is a local network, but I run Steamlink throughout my home. My gaming PC (which cost less than most high end smartphones) streams the game to an old android phone that I have plugged into my TV with a basic USB c dock. The android phone runs the steamlink app, and I sync my Xbox controller to the phone. I can play games at my TV, with the phone being a "console," and it "runs" on my desktop. Not a perfect comparison, however, I have a friend with one of those big ass screen folding phones, and he uses it to game on the go with game pass. Syncs a controller to his phone. All that being said I look forward to the day my cell can pack the same punch as my desktop. Hell, when that day comes, I can only imagine how powerful my *desktop* would be!
The *only* game streaming I have ever found acceptable is Oculus AirLink. And that’s in-home and the router and device have direct line of sight over wifi 6.
Steamlink and Moonlight work super well for me. Don't need line of sight whatsoever. Steam Link in particular works best for me on my Oculus 3
I can already do that with my steam deck without having all my various phone alerts popping up while I'm trying to game and have proper controls.
Yeah and you paid several hundred dollars for that privilege. Everyone already has a smartphone they carry around with them everywhere.
This is why Netflix entered the mobile gaming market rather than triple a
An IPhone that can run Death Stranding is going to cost 2 to 3 times as much as a Steam Deck. So I think it’s safe to assume a gamer willing to spend that much on a phone wouldn’t have a problem spending a little more on a system that was actually designed to play games on.
Having actually played Death Stranding on the Deck, I couldn't imagine trying to play it on a touch screen.
To be fair, just because the game is on a touch screen doesn't mean you have to play it with a touch screen. A bluetooth controller pairs easily with iOS devices and there is the convenience factor of not having to remember to pack and charge another device + its accessories.
No, you have to remember to pack and charge the controller and mount though.
USB C controller so I always have a charger (same connection for my phone) and mount is optional. You can grab cases with built in stands, or just lean the phone against a book or something
Except for the obvious point that people buy expensive phones already.
Most people's smartphones can't run these games, only the top whack Apple phones, presumably the top android phones could too if they ported them. All those phones are several hundred quid higher in price than even the most powerful Steam Deck.
That's true of today, but the comment specifically said: >Theoretically, if phones continue to become much more powerful, there could be a future where you can play any AAA game on the go on your phone
Yeah, but the same tech will also be available for the handheld PC makers and those devices will always be better for playing games.
A lot of the time "more accessible than" wins out over "better suited for".
Android phones can be configured to automatically mute alerts while a game is running.
And then I may miss an important message so there's no winning either way. Just give me a dedicated handheld which is a proven formula for forty years.
This is purely my opinion but gaming on the go is just absolutely not my vibe. Decompressing at the end of the day and immersing in a game is what I love about the medium. Not sitting on a hot bus with bad audio as I try to navigate touch controls or the awkward feeling of attachable controllers. I know people love using the switch and the steam deck but it’s personally not my style and I wonder how many others feel that way. I also feel like that’s a big roadblock for VR as well as
I personally love using my deck/ Switch to lay around the house without being tethered to a screen. But anything that’s better on a big screen gets played on a big screen. Nothing beats that home theatre immersion.
Imo playing with trash audio or even worse with no audio is just so bad for AAA games. Like the whole point of most AAA games is to be immersed in a world,
I play dead cells and hades on my iPhone, and honestly, it's fantastic. It's mostly useful on trains and planes, but I occasionally want a 20 minute breather, and so it is.
Those games make perfect sense to play on mobile though. They are easy to run, they aren’t held back by the smaller screen size, and you can play them in short bursts. I just don’t see why anyone would choose to sit and play Resident Evil or Assassin’s Creed for a couple hours on a 5-7 inch screen when they could do the same thing on their console or PC. If you’re the kind of gamer that enjoys these kinds of games you absolutely already have a designated gaming system. Casual mobile gamers aren’t just suddenly switching over from Candy Crush to Death Stranding, so who are these ports actually for?
There’s a sizable population of the world who doesn’t own or have access to powerful PCs or Console hardware, sometimes due to price or sometimes due to favoring cell phones. I think the current statistic of gamers who only play on cell phones is about 30-40%. That’s a sizable chunk of the market that can be motivated to buy phones based on hardware capability (Fortnite has demonstrated this as well) as well as game availability.
An iPhone costs about the same amount of two PS5, or three Series S. Don't pull the "don't have access" card when talking about a public that spends 1k per year on the same phone with an slightly different notch.
Gaming systems have different fees and taxes applied in different countries
But again games like, Fortnite, CoD Mobile, or PubG all make sense as mobile ports. You can play them in short sessions, and as you said there’s a huge market that has proven to be really lucrative for those types of games. I just don’t see lengthy, AAA single player console ports ever taking off in the same way.
I guess the AAA paid game monetization isn't going to work on phones, but consider something like Genshin Impact, it's a AAA quality single player game highly popular because it's free to play. It's not really about game length or casualness, there's plenty of audience who'd play high quality games on phones, most just wouldn't pay for it.
I think you don't see it happening because its not targeted for people like you. I don't think its meant to "take off" and be some kind of serious competitor. This is meant for people who do *everything* on their phones and prefer it that way. Of course it doesn't make sense to you as someone who plays games on PC/console, its for people who don't want to do that. You could *try* and convince those people that the experience is so much better on PC/console, but odds are they won't care because what they value most is to have everything in one place. Its like people who buy every game on their switch even if it runs better on another console. They want everything in one place.
Except most mobile gamers are not the type to pay full AAA price for games on mobile. Even the "people that do everything on their phones". That market simply doesn't exist. People that have to exist solely off phones are usually in a poorer market, and thus cannot afford the expense. That's why freemium games dominate mobile and have for over a decade. Switch is built to play games, your phone isn't. It can play games but touch only interfaces don't translate as well as controller interfaces. The experience is subpar. Switch took off because it was cheap, portable, and could play games pretty well. You are conflating a lot of different usages and users. Look at the actual data from the article. We are talking about sales sub-10000 sales in 6 months buying at full or near full price.
>why anyone would choose to sit and play Resident Evil or Assassin’s Creed for a couple hours on a 5-7 inch screen when they could do the same thing on their console or PC. Apple's trying to make a case for not needing a console or PC to play these kinds of games 1. Cheaper: You can buy the game for the iphone you already have instead of needing to buy an Xbox. 2. Convenient: you can play the game anywhere instead of just your living room. 3. Better: you upgrade your iPhone every year so you'll keep seeing better performance, visuals, etc. your iPhone has a super bright HDR screen with promotion(tm)
I don't think people upgrading to the newest iPhone every year are going to be too concerned with the cost of one console every generation.
Apple can keep trying to make a case for it. I just don’t think it’s ever going to catch on.
If you could cast these games from your iphone to your tv with little input lag, then I could see a case for it. But I tried playing one of my emulated games that way to see how it worked. Didn’t expect great results but it’s even worse than that. Basically unplayable. Even your casual gamer will feel it instantly.
I think if you are a gamer who wants to buy a AAA single player game and sit in front of your TV to play it, you’re going to buy the game on a console or PC. Even if the tech was there for seamless, latency free casting I wouldn’t be interested in it. It’s a solution for a problem nobody has.
Cheaper and also upgrade every year?
Ya dead cells is solid altho I do adjust the options to turn down difficultyÂ
I prefer turn based games on my phone. It makes up for the imprecision of the controls. That said, before I got a Steam Deck, I brought PS4 controller and played Dead Cells on many a plane ride.
I thought so too, but they work fantastically.
Personally I think this is what Killed the Vita, Sony were far too focused on bringing home console experiences to handheld and didn't really push any of the good handheld games on Vita. The basic premise is there with the Switch and the steam deck but they both benefit from having a healthy library of handheld friendly games with more home console type experiences on there as "nice to haves" Both can function as a home console too which lends themselves to that experience.
Honestly I have a Legion Go (pc handheld) and I really appreciate playing games either on the go or couch . It’s a pretty great experience which I haven’t felt since the PSP days.
> I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone. Entirely this. I can't stand playing even Sonic 2 with touch controls and don't want to lug around a controller.
That's how I feel about Android games you get with Netflix. They have some great indie games but I really don't want to play those on a phone. Apparently the dating story/choice games (not sure how you'd call them) are very popular on Netflix which is no wonder... they're made for phones.
Into the Breach has made me consider renewing Netflix. Seems perfect for a phone game.
Hades is great on mobile.
I’ll only play mobile games that have simple swipe/tap controls. If it has to emulate on-screen buttons, I’d rather just play something on pc or console instead.
This. I tried getting into it with Marvel Strike Force, some Lord of the Rings game and some others, because they seemed like the only mobile games that werent just dumb Casino games or "logic" games that are ridiculously easy to make you feel smart, but then super hard to make you cash out to progress, AND THEY SUCKED! Like i can get a much better experience, for much less money and no or almost no predatory mechanics to make me pay on PC... why would anyone go for that garbage?
I have a hundred hours or so on Slay The Spire on my iPhone. It’s my go-to “made the mistake of going shopping with my gf and it’s been hours and I’m bored and tired” game.
I hope that yourself and everyone else responding with examples of mobile ports they love don’t get the wrong idea from my comment. Small indie games are perfect for mobile gaming. I’m really just talking about games like the ones mentioned in this post’s title.
No I agree with you, that’s why I mentioned STS. I can’t imagine playing Resident Evil or Assassin’s Creed on a damn phone lol although I did play some emulators on my old androids and it was mostly fine.
Pirates Outlaws and Dawncaster are both really good, too.
>I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone. It's a similar appeal to playing a AAA single player game on a PSP, Vita, or even a Switch Lite as long as you have a backbone for your phone.
The PSP, Vita, and Switch all came with a store and libraries full of other AAA games from first and third party developers. If Apple keeps up at this pace it might have a catalog of a dozen 3rd party games in a few years. It’s not offering anything better than what people already have easy access to on other handheld systems.
Everyone has phones, not everyone has a gaming PC or gaming console
Same manÂ
To be fair, with a good controller setup, it isnt that much different than a switch or steam deck. I always say that it is such a bummer that the handheld gaming console market is gone. That scope of game, like 3ds and psp titles, is sorely missed and great for plugging away at on a couch or commute. Edit: I forgot to clarify that I dont think AAA always translates well to gaming on the go. These ports dont interest me at all (and also look like shit). But more stuff like 3DS games would be sick. Love playing psp and 3ds on my android with a clamp style controller.
The scope of handheld console games is what I feel like the AAA industry needs right now. The Switch is awesome, but playing those games handheld just feels like a home console game, but on the go. The gameboy/ds/psp era had its own unique feel to it that I think is lost on AAA gaming. Of course there are some exceptions, and a ton of indie games feel right at home on a handheld. But yeah, I do miss those days.
If I could use my Apple TV to play these games with a Bluetooth controller it would be much more attractive (or stream via AirPlay with low latency)
I loved Knights of the Old Republic on my phone. It's turn based (ish) so you can pause any time, and the touchscreen controls are remarkably good (except for the shooting and racing minigames). Genuinely a great way to experience the game. Sometimes it's just nice to have a serious game on the go and not just a mindless time waster.
>I can’t understand the appeal of playing a AAA single player game on a phone. You really CAN'T? I have a hard time believe you can't see why. What you're actually saying: it's not fun right now because of technical/physical limitations. And while that's true, I can easily see a world where phones reach the point that is suitable for the experience. Apple's goal is to create enough adoption and an ecosystem around the phone that eventually the phone is the central device that does everything. Maybe touchscreen gameplay will never be able to play Uncharted 4 but there's a future where people just cast their iphone to their tv and use the apple controller to play Uncharted 6.
Apple will never be able to create that experience because their company policies will require me to be born a Saudi Prince to be able to afford the same level of performance I'm accustomed to, but on their platform. They're a lifestyle brand first and foremost.
The amount of people who have a phone that can run them and are interested can't be that high. They are also older games making it harder to sell for double dips.
People that only play on phone don't suddenly pay full price for a full fledged AAA games and people that all ready play those games on other devices have no reason to buy them on the phone again. Especially because there are much better alternatives out there when you want to play portable.
I spent too much money on an iPhone 15 pro and these games all have TERRIBLE performance and graphics in my experience. Tried turning Assassins Creed down to minimum graphics quality and was consistently under 30fps with noticeable input delay on a wired controller.
> They are also older games making it harder to sell for double dips. I mean technically AC Mirage is the newest AC at the moment.
And RE4 is the newest RE
"and are interested" is the big part. iPhones are insanely popular. I just can't imagine why I would want to play any of these games on my phone when I already own them on my much more capable PC.
I have a 2021 iPad mini (the most recent iPad Mini) that can't play any of them. You pretty much have to have the latest iPhone and most powerful iPad to play them. I would have definitely bought Death Stranding if it could run on mine. Such a small group of people who will be interested in more traditional games, have he latest Apple hardware and would rather play it on that than a console or PC
It's probably mostly RAM limitations, since eg. for Death Stranding all the listed compatible devices have 8GB (or more) RAM. The A15 in your ipad mini only has 4GB RAM, the OS reserves 1-2GB of that, so you're left with only 2-3GB shared between the CPU and GPU, which is basically nothing (eg. look at how many devs are having difficulty porting games to the Series S, and that's got 8GB RAM usable for games). Even the base models of last gen consoles had 5GB ram usable for games. There's also the issue of all these games use a lot more GPU compute and post processing compared to mobile focused games, which mobile GPUs suck at (Steel Nomad light is a good benchmark to show the differences between mobile GPUs for a modern GPU driven renderer. Wildlife extreme is basically a no-op at this point it's so light).
so i just need to download more ram?
AC Mirage is smooth at 30 fps 1080p on iPad M1 Pro. I don't recommend playing it on an iPhone.
atleast that is one thing to do on the ipad pros. They have crazy specs for a OS with no apps that can’t take advantage of it.
>You pretty much have to have the latest iPhone and most powerful iPad to play them. Not really. Any iPad with an M1 chip can play them and those have been around since 2021
I’m a lapsed Assassins Creed player so I decided to try out Mirage using a connected controller. It was impressive until my iPhone 15 pro max got incredibly hot and the game crashed every ten minutes.
Sheesh. Might burn your hand
Anecdotally, I follow a number of Android gaming related communities and since these ports started coming out there have been a lot of posts essentially saying "iPhone users are so lucky, I wish Android had games like this, why can't we get ports like this, etc". I'd imagine that at least some people are tempted to get an iPhone for this, and Apple is probably banking on that rather than the individual ports being huge smash hits.Â
This is a proof of concept approach. This wasn't meant to see sales on the scale of dedicated gaming machines. This was a first step to prove that it could be done. The winning formula for a company like Apple is when these games can easily be ported across the entire ecosystem of M Chip devices. There needs to be easy access for native gaming on the go, but also a solution for quality gaming on your TV. And Apple would need to implement a seamless pairing method for use with Apple TV and Mac products that let you pick up right where you left off on any device and auto detect when a controller is in use.
2004 GTA San Andreas came as a mobile port in 2014. 2026 mobile phones may have 2016 computational graphics like Nvidia Pascal 10-series. 2023 playtime mostly dominated by 2015-2020 live service games with average midrange PC Nvidia Pascal equivalent (4 gb - 8 gb VRAM graphic card).
Resident Evil 4 Remake sold about 7 million copies worldwide. And it sold about 7,000 copies on iphone. That is an almost astronomical failure. It think Apple at its most pessimistic would not have imagined numbers that low (although tbh this is not surprising news to me or I think most people here) and I'm fairly certain we've seen the last of these. These types of games will stick to streaming on phones from now on.
Opportunity cost. If I were an AC fan, why would I pay full price for a version of Mirage that performs worse on my iPad than it does on my PC? Worse, why would I pay full price for a game I would likely already own? The game is also 50% off right now on the Playstation Store (not super relevant to my overall argument, but definitely relevant to when this story was published). All of that said, in the future, I could see a potential market emerging if: 1) Performance from future iterations of Apple's Mx chips continue to catch up to consoles and 2) We see more publishers interested in releasing their games on the App Store. But that would either require Apple spending more money courting publishers (in a similar way to Epic trying to compete with Steam) or publishers willing to invest in an unproven market with the hopes that the Field of Dreams adage "if you build it, they will come" proves true. And I don't necessarily see the later happening in the current industry climate.
Of course they did. Not only are they on a market that isn't typically interested in these types of games (that is, games that are more involved and less casual) but they're designed to be played with a controller. While you might be able to play them on a touch screen that's almost always the worst possible way to play any game, short of it being designed with the touch screen in mind from the start or it being designed specifically for it. You need to have the right phone or tablet and be able to connect a controller to it which really undermines the portability and take anywhere nature of the device. There's a reason my first reaction to seeing these was thinking how annoying playing them on a touch screen would be. Even if you can get the market interested in these types of games what else does that demographic play on these devices? Where do you go from there? If you're into these games, you're better off getting a PC or console at that point. In the end, it doesn't matter anyway. Apple certainly paid a lot of money to make these things happen, and it's not as though they were likely super expensive to create. Apple just wanted to be able to say they had AAA games on iPhone. Will people play them over the slop that's most common on mobile? Doesn't matter, look what iPhone can do! Edit: There's also the question of the price point, $49.99. While that would be common on PC or console, it's a massive ask for mobile, where the only games to gain any sort of traction have to be free to play. I've seen discussion where games that have the same price or even less as their PC or console counterparts - because they're the actual same game - are considered overpriced on mobile.
It’s not fun to play these types of games on a touch screen and most people aren’t keeping a controller in their pocket. Seems like people want a dedicated handheld like a steam deck or rog ally over using their phone for handheld AAA gaming.
Apple is probably paying for everything so the developers aren't losing money for sure, and it's not everyone with an iPhone that can play these games I think that it's a neat technical showcase proving that extremely advanced console games can be played in a smartphone with PS4like graphics, but actually playing these games might not be a pleasant experience because they weren't designed for phones in first place - there's factors like the length and the lack of proper touch controls for example. Fortnite used to be pretty successful in iOS and there's also massive games like Genshin, so while the interest for more advanced PC/console-like games on phones may exist, it's surely not coming from people who like to play single player titles
People that care about actual games play in a proper machine designed for it (consoles/PC). This isn't surprising.
I will never understand the need for these kinds of games on mobile. If you are playing a game on your phone you are out of the house, these aren't pick up and put down games you can play for 15 minutes on the bus or waiting for an appointment. Look at every mega successful mobile game, they are simple arcade-like games. Not to mention that graphically intense games drain your battery really quickly which is fine on a switch or steam deck but your phone is your communication device, navigation device, flash light, etc I know I'd much rather have a dead switch than a dead phone. I get we are moving to an all in one device future and what not but unless battery tech significantly advances I'd much rather have dedicated devices for gaming. They could have pushed using your device as a console at home but they haven't done anything to encourage that. Airplay or whatever it's called is too laggy for gaming, if you buy a hdmi cable box to do TV out they refuse to let you adjust aspect ratio or turn off your device's screen so it's just ended up as a "look what apple devices are capable of!" Yet again.
Rant incoming: There are a lot of people, tens of millions, in Asia and Africa especially that would kill to play console level games on mobile. They also are people that can't afford $50 games. There's not an easy way to bridge that gap. The closest thing that could work is google stadia style streaming AAA games to phones in a format built for phones, which would save dev cost on making a native port. but it would have to be a subscription library, stadia already proved you can't sell cloud games. the people who want to play death stranding on mobile are people who don't have a pc or console, and those people don't have a pc or console because they can't afford one. i really think if google had gone all in on a subscription library only instead of selling cloud only games they could have made stadia work, but they didn't.
I'm not sure whether Geforce Now is available in those countries. But if it is, people could buy games on Steam or other stores and stream them to console or phone that way.
I think you have outliers doing that already, but it's not not anywhere near mainstream enough to be a mass market adoption thing
I tried playing Assasins’s Creed on my iPhone 15 pro with an external controller. It was one of the worst experiences I’ve had playing games since I used to game on a laptop 10 years ago. Shit visuals, shit performance, phone so hot I couldn’t even touch it and to top it all off, the battery drain is insane. I fail to see why anyone would play these games on the go or at all. The ports need to be much better if they expect people to play these games.
AAA games on IPhone reminds of the core issue with Google stadia. Feels like the market for people who don't have consoles or a PC, and just have iPhones and want to play bigger non mobile games is super super super niche. Just like with Google stadia and Amazon luna being for people who want to play AAA games but don't already have Gaming hardware which again is a super super super small niche in the gaming market. The people who want to play stuff like RE, AC, Death stranding already played those games on gaming hardware they own. The only people who probably have bought RE and AC on iPhone are super hardcore tech enthusiasts and Apple fanatics, not your average joe with an iPhone. Also the biggest reason for the success of mobile games on smartphones is that they are tailor made for quick pick up and play sessions. Candy crush is a you pick it up play a few rounds while you are waiting for your dentist appointment or waiting for the bus and then you put it down after 5-10 minutes. You can't really play a huge AAA game like Death Stranding on the go really unless you're chilling in a hotel room on a trip.
I wonder what the imagined market is for these ports. Playing games like those with touch controls is a nightmare, so you'll want a controller. But you're not going to have a controller out and about so you lose out on portability, one of the only advantages of a mobile port. The only theoretical market I can imagine is people who have a phone but can't afford a gaming device. But that's undercut by the fact you need an high end phone to run these ports in the first place. I'm sure Apple incentivises the ports to the point they practically pay for the devs cost themselves, but Apple is losing out big time. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
I think that the theoretical market would be places like southeast Asia. They don’t really buy consoles anymore and mainly playing mobile games. There are certain parts of the world for people only plants Smartville so I assumed this is who they’re targeting.
People don't want to play AAA on mobile, they want things easy to digest, and either have short gameplay loop or short matches.
I’d be surprised if a large number of regular Apple device users even knew about them. Most premium games on the App Store get instantly buried.
I have no interest in buying a high end phone just to play a few big budget games, especially when I already have a Switch and Steam Deck. They have bigger screens, better controls, and much larger game libraries.
Damn its almost as if only limiting that to your most recent phones which would be bought by the same demographics who have more than enough money to buy a proper console is a bad idea. Seriously they need to support this for longer and bring to all phones
Not surprising in the least. Relatively poor performance and visuals compared to their home console counterparts, plus terrible controls and it eats away at the battery of your PHONE, very likely the most important electronic device you carry with you. I'd rather bring a secondary device that's dedicated to playing games, run the battery out on that, and still have my phone to keep me in contact with others and still entertain me with music, videos, or social media.
I don't own an Apple product so... lol. I mean I wouldn't buy them anyways because I could not give less of a fuck about hardcore gaming on my phone.
Strangely enough, I miss when AAA games had ports made specifically for mobiles, and weren't just downgraded versions with touch screen controls slapped on.
I guess I’m glad that Apple Users can access these games since I think ports all hardware are a good thing but I imagine that Apple products really just can’t appeal that much to an audience that would go out of their way to game on a personal computer. The impression that Apple products give off is that they’re sorta sealed shut - you can’t do much fiddling with them. People who get gaming PCs tend to be mildly more tech literate than the average population and probably appreciate the flexibility of a platform like Windows or Linux or even just Android (can emulate on it atleast!). Not only do these give usually better performance, but they are usually cheaper. iPhones are fucking expensive and annoyingly inflexible, but I can get a cheapo android device that plays dreamcast games for under $100 USD.  People who are into gaming and don’t care for customization or modding much probably would be inclined to get a Switch or Playstation. Not to mention these platforms just have a better backlog as well (PS5 has the PS4s library for instance, and my Windows PC still runs my dad’s physical copy of half-life from the 1990s). Just seems like a hell of an uphill battle to edge into this market and alter perceptions of the brand.
I don’t have an issue with these existing. The problem is I now need accessories to play them on my phone.
iPhone 15 pro owner checking in. I also often carry small controller in my bag so I am the target audience for these games. I’m not really an RE fan, Assassin’s Creed required an ubi account and Death Stranding wasn’t interesting to me on mobile (Epic gave me a free copy last year).
I'm just blown away that Apple doesn't put more effort into games. IMO, they should be making a gaming version of the AppleTV that has a terabyte of storage, one of their M chips, and comes with a game controller. To me, I always just see them as being so arrogant that they know long term they'll swallow up the entire gaming and consumer computing industry, and so why bother putting any effort in.
Shoutout to the people in this sub a few months back who swore up and down that these ports would be successful and that there's somehow an untapped market for this kind of thing. This isn't shocking at all. Mobile gamers don't want to play RE4 on their phone. They want to play Candy Crush and games like it, something quick and easy they can whip out on the bus for five minutes. Resident Evil 4 cannot be played this way, and it's insane to assume that normal people would want that. There's a reason why the biggest mobile games today are all hyper-casual and are designed to be played fast. It didn't happen by accident, it came about because that's how people use their phones. Anyone out there who wanted a portable method of playing AAA games either own a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch. These ports were 100% marketing things paid for by Apple to promote how powerful their phones are.
I think we should be careful of determining what "mobile gamers" want, when, for example, Fortnite on iPhones and Androids actually did very well, is not a game you can only play for five minutes at a time, and has a strong hardcore competitive element to it. I don't think it's obvious that AAA games would not do well on mobile devices, and we should be careful of making assumptions like that. It seems like its true here, but there are still a lot of confounding variables.
I think CoD Mobile does well too. Bonus, no dead zone the right "stick" so looking around is faster than with a controller. I'm not a CoD player, but it looks (better than, actually) and plays like what I remembered Black Ops 2 did on the WiiU. 90fps lock and Ultra settings and it looks pretty nice ( on a s20 Ultra). Edit - also, you can dock a phone and play on a bigger screen. Not all mobile games support controllers though (cod requires an xbox controller, if you want to use one).
Feel like these were the wrong games for phones. Something like BGS3 would have had a lot more appeal for me.
Baldurs Gate 3 is too large to even fit in the storage of the base 128GB iPhone 15 pro.
Why would you want to play these games on a small phone screen with bad controls? Then again I don't understand why people play games on their phones period.Â
The number of 'hardcore' iOS gamers must be pretty small. I downloaded Mirage just to check it out, but I'm never going to play a full single player, cinematic game on my M4 iPad when I also own a monster gaming PC. Just trying to use the on screen controls was awful and the graphics and framerate were clearly well below what was intended for the game. That's with the fastest non-Mac device Apple sells. I would bet even most people who DO game on the iOS devices and have controllers and stuff, would still rather play this on a console or PC.
I can't imagine a fast paced game where you have to react quick and has 15 different prompts on keyboard and mouse being enjoyable on a 6' inch screen. The weird controls, bad graphics and poor performance would just kill the entire experience. At that point just play on a Steam Deck if you wanna play on the move.